The Pope Says The Entire Christian Calendar Is Wrong

The entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation, the
Pope has declared, as he claims in a new book that Jesus was born
several years earlier than commonly believed.

The 'mistake' was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius
Exiguus or in English Dennis the Small, the 85-year-old pontiff
claims in the book 'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives',
published on Wednesday.

"The calculation of the beginning of our calendar – based on the
birth of Jesus – was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a
mistake in his calculations by several years," the
Pope writes in the book, which went on sale around the
world with an initial print run of a million copies.

"The actual date of Jesus's birth was several years before."

The assertion that the Christian calendar is based on a false
premise is not new – many historians believe that Christ was born
sometime between 7BC and 2BC.

But the fact that doubts over one of the keystones of Christian
tradition have been raised by the leader of the world's one
billion Catholics is striking.

Dennis the Small, who was born in Eastern Europe, is credited
with being the "inventor" of the modern calendar and the concept
of the Anno Domini era.

He drew up the new system in part to distance it from the
calendar in use at the time, which was based on the years since
the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian.

The emperor had persecuted Christians, so there was good reason
to expunge him from the new dating system in favour of one
inspired by the birth of Christ.

The monk's calendar became widely accepted in Europe after it was
adopted by the Venerable Bede, the historian-monk, to date the
events that he recounted in his Ecclesiastical History of the
English People, which he completed in AD 731.

But exactly how Dennis calculated the year of Christ's birth is
not clear and the Pope's claim that he made a mistake is a view
shared by many scholars.

The Bible does not specify a date for the birth of Christ. The
monk instead appears to have based his calculations on vague
references to Jesus's age at the start of his ministry and the
fact that he was baptized in the reign of the emperor Tiberius.

He also weighs in on the debate over Christ's birthplace,
rejecting arguments by some scholars that he was born in Nazareth
rather than Bethlehem.

John Barton, Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy
Scripture at Oriel College, Oxford University, said most
academics agreed with the Pope that the Christian calendar was
wrong and that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly
thought, probably between 6BC and 4BC.

"There is no reference to when he was born in the Bible - all we
know is that he was born in the reign of Herod the Great, who
died before 1AD," he told The Daily Telegraph. "It's been surmised for a
very long time that Jesus was born before 1AD so technically we
may well be living in 2007 or 2008 or whatever - no one knows for
sure."

The idea that Christ was born on Dec 25 also has no basis in
historical fact. "We don't even know which season he was born in.
The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part
of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter
solstice."